


29. Numb

by titC



Series: Whumptober 2019 [29]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, whumptober2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2020-11-09 06:22:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20848940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titC/pseuds/titC
Summary: Matt & Elektra visit a grave.





	29. Numb

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Whumptober](https://whumptober2019.tumblr.com/) for organizing it and [PixelByPixel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/) for the beta!  
For my DaredevilBingo prompt _Katana_, my MattElektraBingo Free Space box (i picked _chance to say goodbye_) and MattElektraShiptober _Grave_. i was very literal for once ;-)

They’re meeting at the City Island dock where the ferry departs. Matthew wanted to see a friend in Harlem first, so Elektra drives directly there and waits for him, her eyes on the clear blue sky. She’s managed to secure a private trip to Hart Island by means of a generous donation and a little name-dropping, and now they can finally visit Stick’s grave. 

No one showed up for his body when he died. When she killed him. Elektra doesn't really regret what she did but she thinks maybe she can now acknowledge she is, and always will be, ambivalent about his role in her life. Ultimately, he used people – children – as much as he was used by the Chaste.

Matthew found about his grave about two months ago. He was working a case for one of his clients whose closest relative was buried on Hart Island when it hit him: where else could they have put Stick? No one would have claimed him; his only family was an annihilated mystic order. Did he even have a name? For them he always was Stick or sensei.

So Matthew searched the police records, contacted the NYC Chief Medical Examiner, looked up the database, and finally he found it: the grave of a one-handed John Doe, buried at around the right time, with a description that matched the one Elektra gave him. Matt’s ways of recognizing someone wouldn't quite help but she remembered him very well, from the lines on his face to a particular scar on his chin. She saw the pictures in the file; she could tell. She _knew_.

And so here they are now. Matthew’s cab pulls by her own rented sportscar and she doesn’t turn in his direction. He knows she’s there.

“So this is it,” he says after the cab drives away. “We’re doing it.”

“Second thoughts?”

“No.” He comes to stand by her side as they wait for the ferry, and the wind makes some of her hair flutter in her face. She’s annoyed and raises her hand to retie her ponytail, but he stops her to catch her fingers in his. “What are we doing?”

“You’re the one who wanted to go.”

He grimaces. “It’s… I don’t know, unfinished business? I need to make peace, I think.”

She shrugs. It doesn’t matter to her, but it does to him. “He can’t hear you now.”

“I think as long as I get the words out, it’s enough.”

“If you say so.” Matthew’s faith and his spirituality, for want of a better word, will never cease to baffle her. Well, they’re one reason she couldn't see him only as a _mission_, way back then. He believes, he prays; he’s always believed in her and prayed for her. Even when no one else would, including Elektra herself.

When they’re told to board the ferry she takes the long, wrapped parcel from her car’s backseat and they follow the captain inside. The crossing won’t be long, but it will be enough to make Matthew queasy; he’s never been good on boats. He says it messes up his balance. As soon as they set foot on the deck, his hand tightens around her arm. It will stay that way until they reach dry, unmoving, safe land. She doesn’t mind; he’s been her anchor often enough.

The crossing is uneventful and when they reach the island they’re met by an officer. His eyebrows twitch when he spots her parcel but he doesn’t say anything about it; they’re registered as chosen family members and no one questions their link to the deceased. Bribes can go a long way, she knows. The officer leads them on beaten earth tracks until they reach a recent plot; the vegetation is newer here, the earth darker in places. He points them to one particular spot before retreating to give them some privacy. 

Elektra looks at it: nothing is growing there. It looks as dead as Stick is. His grave is covered with loose dirt; the records show it is fairly recent. The body was kept in storage for a long time. 

“I thought I’d be feeling… more. At least _something_,” he says after a long silence.

“But you’re not?”

“I don’t know what I’m feeling. Numb?” He sighs. “I cried, you know? When I learned he was dead. But I’m not sure if I cried more for him or for you.”

“I killed him. It was my choice.” This is still a point of contention between them: he insists she wasn’t entirely herself and that she was somehow not Elektra Natchios; she knows she was finding out exactly who she was. Everything she is now, she owes to that violent awakening of her own independence. It’s too much for him to accept, and he refuses to think she doesn’t regret a thing.

They just don’t talk about it; it’s easier.

For all that Matthew said he needed to speak to Stick, he keeps quiet. She wonders if he is praying; his hands are tight around his cane and his lips are slightly downturned. He could be on the verge of tears; he could be angry. She isn’t sure, but she goes with both.

His head turns a little in her direction. “You knew him for much longer than I did.” 

He’s not asking anything, but she answers anyway. “He found me, he trained me, he sent me to rich parents, and then he came back to send me on his missions. There was never one motive for what he did, Matthew, you know that. I’m not trying to understand; I don’t even want to. He’s dead now.” It’s the past, and the past is what the present is built on. It needs to be a sound foundation, not questioned until you poke so many holes in it everything collapses.

Elektra is already too familiar with everything collapsing around her, and so is Matthew; she doesn't quite understand why he can’t leave things be. But she won’t change him, and she doesn’t even want to. He is Matthew.

“Did you miss him? When he left you with your parents, did you miss him?”

“He was the only thing I knew.” She doesn’t ask Matthew if he did.

“I thought…” He searches from something in his pocket and gets it out; there’s some wadded up paper in his fist. “I thought I’d get some sort of closure, coming here, but I’m not. I’m not even sure what _closure_ means anymore.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It comes from yourself; only you can put whatever happened to rest and move on.”

“You make it sound both easy and hard.”

She smiles a little. “I died. I have insight.” She watches him kneel and start digging a shallow hole in the dirt with one hand. “What are you doing?”

He puts a crumpled, braided paper bracelet in the hole and pushes the dirt back in. “He was a hypocrite, and I want him to remember.” He pauses. “At least that’s what I want to believe: that he remembers.”

She’s not sure whether Stick being aware of his faults makes them more forgivable or less so. “I have something for him too.” She unwraps the parcel she brought along and takes the katana out, still in its sheath.

His eyebrows rise above his glasses when he realises what she’s holding. “He’s already dead,” he says. “Don’t think you need to kill him again.”

“He’d welcome a weapon, and those were his favourite.” If she could stab him a little more as she planted the blade into his grave, then so be it. She had no regrets. 

She hesitates, then leaves it in its sheath before thrusting it point down in the soft ground around where she estimates his chest to be, pushing it down deep enough it won’t budge easily. She’s instructed the Hart Island people to put it in his grave if it’s ever knocked down, saying he was a master swordsman and that it was her way of paying her respects to her teacher. It’s only partly true, but it’s not entirely wrong either.

“Any last words?” Elektra asks.

“He was the worst,” Matthew replies. “But he saved me too.”

“That’s a good summary.” She takes his hand. “And without him, we wouldn't have met.”

Finally, his lips curve up a little. “That too.”

“Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m done now.”

“Good.”

She leads them back to the ferry, ignoring the officer who was supposed to escort them around and making her own way like she always does now. _Their_ own way, today.

The katana will stay with Stick, and they’ll never come back.


End file.
